


The Signs that the Signmakers Made

by pellucid



Category: Battlestar Galactica (2003)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-25
Updated: 2014-02-25
Packaged: 2018-01-13 16:53:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,791
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1233982
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pellucid/pseuds/pellucid
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Every time she closes her eyes she remembers she's dying again.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Signs that the Signmakers Made

**Author's Note:**

> Spoilers through "Crossroads, part 1," beta by Gabolange. This is the Laura Roslin of my heart, no matter what happened afterwards.
> 
> Written in June 2007.

The first time, the diagnosis wasn't really a surprise. She'd ignored and denied the lump she found, but she'd always known what it was. The memory of her doctor's office in Caprica City has the too-vivid sharpness of a film, a grotesque fairy tale with bright filters, the doctor's mouth moving noiselessly. Once upon a time, she had cancer.

It's almost a surprise the second time, but not quite. There's no lump or other warning signs, and she doesn't think to be suspicious when Cottle wants to follow up on some blood work. But there is an extra long drag on the cigarette and a crease between his eyebrows, and suddenly cancer rings in her ears in the instant before he opens his mouth.

She meets with Bill about the trial, and Chief Tyrol about the union, and then returns to _Colonial One_ for the food rationing committee and the education committee and a working dinner with her economic advisors. Every time she closes her eyes she remembers she's dying again.

Later that evening, they've finished the ritual of going over the next day's schedule, and Tory stands to go. "My cancer has returned," Laura says, half to herself, trying on her tongue the words that have been racing abstractly through her mind all day. Tory blanches. 

"What?" Tory stammers, sinking back into the chair.

"The appointment earlier with Cottle," Laura explains. "He's done some tests, so we'll know more when those are back. We won't tell the public yet, of course. Be thinking about the best way to use the information to our advantage when it becomes necessary to disclose it." Her voice sounds far away to her own ears, so cool and collected. She's pleased she can manage this calmness.

"I, um." Tory hasn't found her voice yet, and Laura is a little disappointed in this reaction. She needs Tory's political pragmatism, not her emotion. "Yes ma'am," Tory finally manages. "Whatever I can do, you'll let me—"

"Of course. Thank you, Tory. Goodnight."

As Laura prepares for bed, she stands in front of the mirror, naked from the waist up. Her breasts don't look any different. She traces the skin lightly, the tiny scar from the first biopsy two years ago. Cottle will probably want to do another after the x-rays are back, and she tries not to mind. Her fingers begin to probe methodically, the left breast, then the right, then the left again, and she can't feel a lump. She doesn't know whether she wants to find it or not. 

Somewhere in a file she has a little pamphlet from the doctor in Caprica City, stuffed into her bag on the morning of the attacks. There are images of the undisciplined growth of cancer cells, and Laura imagines them taking control of her breasts, her blood, her lymphatic system. She fantasizes about lining the cells up in an orderly row, making them work for her instead of against her.

Tomorrow she'll tell Bill. She'll prepare him better than she did Tory—blurting it out like that was, she realizes in retrospect, a bit unfair. She makes a mental note to apologize to Tory in the morning. 

"You should sit down, Bill," she'll say. "I have something to tell you." There will be fear in his eyes, and perhaps he'll cry, or at least hold her tight, because he thinks he's in love with her.

She only really loves the fleet, the abstract human race that will never love her back, will never touch her or kiss her softly or facilitate fantasies about rustic cabins and making love under the stars. Perhaps it makes her cold, this impersonal love she harbors for the numbers on her whiteboard. 

Leaving the mirror, she pulls on her bathrobe, wraps it around herself protectively, and walks over to the window. Fingertips pressed against the glass, she counts ships. She never looks out the window on the other side of the cabin, the side where only _Galactica_ looms, blotting out the rest of the fleet, even the stars themselves. It would be so easy to lose perspective if she looked out that window. 

In another time and place, she might have loved Bill. In another time and place, she might never have looked at him twice. Instead, there is only here and now, death and responsibilities; tomorrow she will tell him about the cancer, and they'll pretend this thing they have is love. And it will be a comfort—to hold and be held.

She steps away from the window, goes to her tiny closet. She keeps the leftover chamalla tucked away there, in the inside pocket of her suitcase. Cottle never asked for it back, before, and she never offered it. At first it was just a painkiller, an alternative to the chemicals and radiation she'd watched her mother endure; when she initially asked Cottle to prescribe it, she hadn't even considered the religious implications. She pulls the chamalla out, now and then, sets the bottle on the table with a prayer candle and Elosha's copy of the Book of Pythia, stained with the blood and dirt of Kobol. Laura doesn't take the drugs, light the candle, or pray, but these items are a reminder of who she was, who she might have been. 

Late one night, soon after she'd been cured of cancer and visions, she had stormed into Bill's quarters, furious.

"What right have you," she'd demanded, "to make decisions about my health?"

He had studied her carefully, a ghost of a smile on his lips. "We need you alive," he'd replied. "And you didn't want to die."

She had turned away from him then, biting her lips against an emotion that was anger and relief simultaneously, bracing one hand against a bulkhead. She didn't know how to be the leader who wasn't dying. "I was supposed to die," she had whispered. "The scriptures, and Kobol—" She had been prepared to stand firm in her disapproval, but her body, traitorous, felt light and dizzyingly pain-free. She was so happy to be alive. 

He had touched her shoulder, wiped away the tears she didn't know were falling, breathed her name as he pulled her into his arms. 

"Okay," she'd said into his shoulder, the certainty of prophecies unraveling in her mind, giving way to the familiar doubts of drug-fuelled visions manipulated for political gain. She hadn't wanted to die. "Okay, okay," she repeated, and she'd grabbed fistfuls of the coarse fabric of his uniform and held on tight.

The fleet rejected her, wandered off course with Baltar and his substitute Earth, and beneath her rage, she understood. She had asked for their faith—as their president but also as their prophet—and she had been wrong. She packed up her chamalla and her scriptures, and she didn't hear Pythia again.

Now, once again, she's dying. A thrill of vindication runs through her body. Despite Baltar, despite Bill, these events will play themselves out. She can't deny the influence of the drugs or her political manipulation of all that happened a year and a half before. But she went to Kobol, she opened the tomb of Athena, she stood on Earth and saw the star signs of the colonies in the night sky. She believed, and she wants to believe again. 

There are five chamalla capsules left in the plastic medicine bottle, and she dumps them out onto her white sheets, lines them up, counts them. Cottle will prescribe her more once his x-rays and tests come back. He also wants to start her on diloxin treatments, which she doesn't want but will agree to, given the political implications of refusal. 

And suddenly she can scarcely breathe. Her hand strikes out reflexively, and the pills skitter across the floor. She has cancer, and she doesn't want to die. All this has happened before and will happen again, Laura thinks, imagines it in Elosha's voice, then Leoben's. She hates how helpless and terrified it all makes her feel—cancer, prophecies, Cylons. Tears threaten as she takes in gulps of air, bends double against the nausea. 

She gropes for normal, finds herself putting in a call to _Galactica_.

"Adama," comes the sleepy voice on the other end.

"Hi." She fights past the tremor in her voice, tries to sound nonchalant. "I, oh Gods, did I wake you? I didn't realize how late—"

"You didn't," he interrupts, and she can hear his smile. "I was just reading in bed."

"Mmm." She runs a hand over her face. "What are you reading?" She slides down the wall to sit on the floor; two chamalla capsules lie near her foot. Her fingers clench around the telephone.

" _Blood Runs at Midnight_. Someone told me it's a pretty good mystery."

"So I've heard," she plays along, allows herself a giggle that lodges in her throat and comes dangerously close to a sob.

"How was the rest of your day?" Bill asks, and she closes her eyes, imagines him placing his bookmark to hold the page in his book, settling in to talk to her.

"Meetings and more meetings," she answers. "The usual." She curses her voice as it breaks just slightly; she knows he will catch it.

"You okay, Laura?"

I have cancer, she thinks. "Yes, fine," she says instead. "Just a bit tired." She's starting to collect herself; this time her voice doesn't betray her.

"I should let you get some rest, then," he replies.

"I—yes, I should rest." She pauses, exhales slowly as she presses her palm against the cool metal of the floor, fingers splayed wide. "Bill, I know we didn't have a meeting scheduled for tomorrow, but I need to see you at some point. If you've got time."

"Of course. Come for dinner?" He sounds pleased.

"Yes, all right. Thank you." 

She will tell him tomorrow. She needs him to know, but that conversation will be its own kind of fight. "We'll beat this," he will say with steely determination, appealing to the part of her that hates being president, that might have loved Bill Adama, that doesn't want to die. She needs him to understand her role, to accept it and help her accept it. She needs to be right about the scriptures, about Earth. She will die for her people to survive.

"Goodnight, Bill," she says softly.

"Sleep well," he replies before hanging up.

She crawls along the floor picking up the chamalla, and she can find only four of the five pills. Her hands don't shake as she replaces them into their bottle, puts it back in the suitcase in the closet. Soon she'll take them, resume her mantle, bring her people home. But tonight her sleep will be dreamless.


End file.
